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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29944752">i hope you lie, lie, lie, lie, lie to me.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunset999/pseuds/sunset999'>sunset999</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Grey's Anatomy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alex still loves Jo (and always will), Angst w a happy ending, based on a 5sos song, post 16x16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:01:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,386</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29944752</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunset999/pseuds/sunset999</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Alex sees Jo after their divorce, it’s catastrophic. The second time Alex sees Jo after their divorce, it’s easy and good and fun. But what happens when they try again?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alex Karev &amp; Jo Wilson, Alex Karev/Jo Wilson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i hope you lie, lie, lie, lie, lie to me.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>I saw you looking brand new overnight...</strong>
</p>
<p>The second time Alex Karev saw Jo after their divorce was across a crowded bar in an unknown city. Shivers had run down his spine as he heard her laughter from across the room. It didn’t matter the time, the place, hell probably not even the universe. Alex knew that laugh anywhere. </p>
<p>The second time Alex Karev saw Jo after their divorce, he had turned around in his bar stool, beer in hand, searching for her. He hadn’t forgotten how beautiful she was nor how in love with her he was, but he had forgotten how taken aback he could be just by one look. One glance, and he was a goner.</p>
<p>Jo looked different than the last time Alex had seen her, she looked happier and brighter and better. Alex would’ve been content watching her from across the room all night. But her laughter had stopped, and suddenly the only thing Alex could see was Jo’s eyes.</p>
<p>
  <strong>I caught you looking too but you didn’t look twice... </strong>
</p>
<p>It was only for a split second. Alex wasn’t even sure that he hadn’t imagined it, that’s how quickly she had looked at him. But she had. It was a look loaded with love and hate, anger and acceptance, happiness and sadness. All of it there. In that one moment. In that one glance.</p>
<p>Jo didn’t look at him for the rest of the night, but Alex couldn’t take his eyes off of her. To him, she was the most fascinating person in the room. He couldn’t get enough of her.</p>
<p>Jo felt Alex’s eyes on her all night. She felt like she could feel his emotions radiating through just him simply looking at her. Staring at her. The one moment she had looked back at him, he had this look of awe. This look of love. Jo knew that look, she had seen it on his face before, she had worn that look when looking at him thousands of times. But Jo wasn’t sure she was ready to face that look again.</p>
<p>So she did everything she could to not look back at Alex again.</p>
<p>Alex, on the other hand, was trying to find the courage to go up and speak to her. He wasn’t sure what good would come out of it, but he was captivated by her. Always had been, probably always would be.</p>
<p>
  <strong>You look happy... </strong>
</p>
<p>Alex’s voice was barely above a whisper as he stood awkwardly in front of Jo, not close enough for him to touch her but not far enough away for her to pretend like her was talking to anyone else.</p>
<p>“What did you say?” Jo asked.</p>
<p>“I said, you look happy...” Alex rubbed the side of his neck, removing a hand from his jacket pocket.</p>
<p>“I am, Alex,” Jo stepped closer to him, “I am happy.”</p>
<p>
  <strong>You look happy... </strong>
</p>
<p>He repeated again, this time she was the only person in the room who could hear his whisper as he lifted his hand to tuck a stray piece of hair behind Jo’s right year.</p>
<p>It happened before he could even process it. It was inevitable, Alex thought, as he felt Jo reach up towards him and pull him closer. Alex had only seen her twice since the divorce and yet... both times they had ended up here. Standing in some bar, trying to resist each other, and yet finding it nearly impossible to do so.</p>
<p>Not nearly, actually. It was completely impossible. Alex could not resist Jo, and Jo could not resist Alex.</p>
<p>He wasn’t complaining about it, he’d never complain about being with Jo but as Jo continues to kiss him, he finds himself thinking of the first time he had seen Jo after their divorce.</p>
<p>
  <strong>Flashing back to New York City... </strong>
</p>
<p>The first time Alex Karev had seen Jo after their divorce had been catastrophic. It was a mess of every kind. Looking back, Alex couldn’t help but feel a little regret for the way it all went down.</p>
<p>Alex had found himself at a conference in New York City. He didn’t want to be there, but when given the opportunity to escape Kansas for a week for some place new, Alex just had to go.</p>
<p>He felt like he was suffocating in Kansas. Not that the kids weren’t great, the kids were everything. He was so content just simply being their dad. He felt suffocated by Izzie, not by her really, but by the pressure he felt to be with her. He would always love Izzie in some way, but the Alex Izzie loved was long gone. She knew him before he found himself. They were history, and yet Izzie kept trying to make them the future. Alex tried to, too, for a while. But it didn’t work. He wasn’t meant to be with Izzie and he had messed it up with Jo. So he was content with being a dad and being alone, but not content enough to turn down a whole week at a conference in a city hours away.</p>
<p>Jo was looking to escape too. The pitying eyes and soft whispers that surrounded her in the hospital were getting too much to bear. The mention of Alex’s name every time someone asked for Dr. Karev seemed to haunt her, so Jo quickly volunteered when Meredith asked who from the general surgery department wanted to travel to New York for a conference.</p>
<p>Alex was already pissed off. He had flown in this morning, and had plans with Arizona to meet for drinks and dinner. Until she had called him and told him that she was called in for an emergency surgery. So here Alex was, alone in a bar, in a city he didn’t know.</p>
<p>The only thing Jo wanted more than sleep was a beer. After dropping her stuff off in her hotel room, she walked a block down the street to the closest bar. It was dimly lit and the smell of alcohol was strong. But it was what Jo needed.</p>
<p>She sat down at the bar, head lost in her own thoughts. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there until she heard that voice.</p>
<p>“Hi.”</p>
<p>Alex had seen her walk in, watched her carefully pick a seat at the bar, heard her order a beer. He had debated not going up to her, not saying anything, not even acknowledging her.</p>
<p>He had ignored her once before, when he had gone to Kansas and had lied to her. And it had practically killed him. So Alex was not going to ignore Jo, he promised himself. Not ever again.</p>
<p>And so he got up, and sat next to her.</p>
<p>Jo had surprised him. At first she was standoffish, didn’t want to hear his questions or even look into his eyes.</p>
<p>But this was Alex. Jo couldn’t avoid Alex forever.</p>
<p>So they talked. Chatted, really. About work. About the conference. About the music playing in the bar.</p>
<p>No one mentioned Kansas or Seattle. No one mentioned kids or former ex wives or divorce papers. It was like they had subconsciously agreed not to go there. So instead, they sat at the bar for hours, having surface level conversations.</p>
<p>For the first time in months, Alex felt like himself again. Sitting next to Jo, laughing over his beer bottle, he felt like he was the idiot kid who was falling in love with Jo and not even realizing it.</p>
<p>Jo smiled thinking about how easy this was. She knew they were avoiding the hard stuff, avoiding talking about the inevitable. But this was good. They were good. They had always been able to laugh and be laid back together, and Jo thought that maybe this, right now, was the universe telling her it was okay.</p>
<p>It was okay that she still wanted Alex.</p>
<p>She tells herself it’s okay as she asks him if he wants to go back to her room.</p>
<p>She tells herself it’s okay as he kisses her in the elevator and she lets him run his hands up and down her back as she tangles her fingers in his hair.</p>
<p>She tells herself it’s okay as she lets him unzip her dress and as she unbuckles his belt.</p>
<p>She tells herself it’s okay the entire time, until as she’s lying there next to him in the afterglow, she suddenly feels like it’s not.</p>
<p>It’s not okay.</p>
<p>He left her. He walked away after promising he never would.</p>
<p>As Jo realizes this she tells him to leave. She throws the blanket off of her and lifts his arm away from her chest as she runs towards the bathroom and turns on the shower.</p>
<p>Jo tries to wash him off of her skin as she hears him knocking on the bathroom door, apologizing for overstepping, blaming himself for letting it happen and eventually, she hears him leave.</p>
<p>Deep down, Jo had wanted him to stay. But Alex isn’t hers anymore. There’s no more for better or for worse. No more forever. So he doesn’t have to stay, not for her anymore.</p>
<p>Jo feels the most conflicted she’s ever felt. Alex made her feel safe, he would always be home for her. But she couldn’t let him waltz back into her life no matter how good it felt to be with him.</p>
<p>The next few days Jo did not see Alex. She looked for him, scanning the list of names in every seminar at the conference.</p>
<p>Alex saw Jo, walking down the hallways or heading towards the bathroom. But after her breakdown or freak out or whatever you wanted to call it, he avoided her. It was the last thing on Earth he wanted to do. But he gave her the space she had so desperately asked for the other night.</p>
<p>Well, at least that had been the plan.</p>
<p>But as Alex packed up his suitcase and was about to leave to go to the airport, he knew he couldn’t leave this thing with Jo unfinished. His apologies that night had been yelled through a closed door over the sound of the shower running.</p>
<p>He just wants to look her in the eyes, and apologize for all of it. So Alex makes his way up to Jo’s room, preparing for what he assumes will be the last time he will ever see her. He knocks once, and she opens the door.</p>
<p>“Alex.” Jo looks a little surprised to see him.</p>
<p>“Hi, Jo,” Alex says timidly, “I just wanted to apologize. For the other night. Jo, I got carried away and if I had realized…”</p>
<p>“That I would’ve reacted like that? Yeah if I had realized that too I would’ve stopped you earlier. Not your fault.” She says curtly, waving her hand as if in one wave of her hand she could erase the entire situation.</p>
<p>“For all of it. I’m sorry for all of it.”</p>
<p>Jo’s smile fades and Alex braces himself for her to shut the door in his face.</p>
<p>But she doesn’t.</p>
<p>“I know.” She says simply.</p>
<p>“I just… my flight leaves soon but I wanted to say I’m sorry and make sure you were okay… which I know it’s not my place anymore to make sure you’re okay but I couldn’t leave here not knowing if you were.” Alex rambles on, and doesn’t even catch Jo smirking at him.</p>
<p>“I’m okay Alex. Really.”</p>
<p>“Good good… well do you need anything? Before I go?”</p>
<p>Jo’s heart skipped a beat. Alex had come to her door, had hung his head in shame (even though Jo had insisted he had nothing to be ashamed about), and he had looked at her with that look of love she knew too well. The past four days Jo kept replaying their night together over and over in her head.</p>
<p>Maybe she was ready, maybe she had to react the way she did the other night to get it all out of her system.</p>
<p>So she nods her head. “I do, actually, I do need something from you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah?” Alex looks surprised at this.</p>
<p>“Yeah. I need you to stay.” Jo smiles.</p>
<p>So he does. He stays.</p>
<p>
  <strong>Changing flights so you’d stay with me… </strong>
</p>
<p>Of course, eventually, Alex and Jo both have to go back home. Not together of course, though as they stood across from each other in the airport, smiling over coffee cups and laughing at their experience in the cab, for a split second they both forgot this fact. It felt like they were them again, they were Alex and Jo.</p>
<p>But when Alex’s flight is called over the loudspeaker, they are both harshly reminded of what is reality.</p>
<p>The reality is that they’re divorced. He’ll awkwardly wave, unsure if he should give her a hug. She’ll smile and simply say goodbye. And he’ll say goodbye too.</p>
<p>And they leave, they head their separate ways.</p>
<p>But there’s hope for them now. Because even if they aren’t the Karevs anymore, even if they aren’t married and happy and living the life they always dreamed of together, there’s hope.</p>
<p>Because they are meant to be. Destined to find their way back to each other. The universe works in cruel, mysterious, and often terrible ways. Jo tells herself this as she sits on the plane, as she arrives back home in Seattle, as she lives her life, slowly letting Alex back into it. She tells herself that maybe it has to be terrible for it to get good.</p>
<p>So she texts him back. When Alex calls, Jo picks up the phone. And slowly, but surely, Jo starts to trust him again. She’s reminded of all the reasons she fell in love with him. Of all the things that made them so great.</p>
<p>Alex has fallen. Not that he ever fell out of love with her, but he finds himself so quickly in that place of love that he was in all those years ago. He feels like the same idiot kid standing in that supply closet, looking at Jo holding a box of powdered donuts.</p>
<p>And he thinks she feels it too.</p>
<p>
  <strong>Remember thinking that I got this right… </strong>
</p>
<p>So Alex jumps, again, and takes the leap of faith. And it goes in every way except the one he imagined.</p>
<p>Alex asks her to visit, to come to Kansas and meet his kids and see the life he lives now. As soon as he says the words over the phone and hears her sharp breath, he realizes he has made a mistake, that he has too quickly jumped to this point of them being together and taking this next step.</p>
<p>“I can’t,” Jo whispers into the phone, “I can’t do that Alex.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.” Alex whispers back, “I shouldn’t have asked.” He continues to talk but she cuts him off.</p>
<p>“I can’t do any of this. I’m sorry Alex… I thought this was fine. It was fine and fun and good but… how can I be with you if I can’t meet them? Because I can’t, Alex. I’m sure they’re great and I know I would love them but all they would do is serve as a reminder of why we aren’t us anymore.” Jo swallows, “I’m sorry Alex.”</p>
<p>And she hangs up the phone, not letting him say anything. What could he say anyway? He had picked his kids over her before, and now that he had them, he wasn’t going to walk away from them.</p>
<p>If Alex could go back in time and do it all over again, he would do it so differently. Why didn’t he do it differently? </p>
<p>Every time he thinks he has it right, he has accidentally done everything wrong.</p>
<p>
  <strong>Now I wish we never met, cause you’re too hard to forget… </strong>
</p>
<p>Alex sees Jo in his dreams. He thinks he sees her in the line at the grocery store, in the halls of the hospital he works at, in the stands at the twins’ little league game. He doesn’t of course, she’s not there. But he thinks she is.</p>
<p>Every time Alex closes his eyes, he sees Jo’s smiling face, the wind whipping her hair around as she stands across from him, saying her vows.</p>
<p>He never regrets her, never regrets marrying her or being with her or loving her. He never wants to forget her. But for a split second he thinks maybe it would be easier if he could. If you don’t know what you’re missing, you can’t live in pain of missing it, right?</p>
<p>As soon as Alex thinks that wishes he didn’t. He doesn’t want to ever forget her.</p>
<p>Jo lies awake every night, in their bed in their loft, and wishes she wasn’t alone. She wishes so desperately that the man who hurt her the most was not the man she loved most in the world. Maybe if she could do it all again, she wouldn’t. Maybe she would walk away earlier or let him down easily, rather than be the one that got hurt.</p>
<p>But Jo knows that if she got the opportunity to do it all again, she would do it. But she’d do it better. Jo would tell Alex she loved him earlier, because she loved him for so long but she was so afraid to tell him. She would tell him about Paul and the horrors that she survived so that they could fight that fight together and earlier and not waste any time apart.</p>
<p>She can’t forget all that Alex did for her. She doesn’t want to forget the way he loved her. But she also can’t forget the way he hurt her.</p>
<p>
  <strong>While I’m cleaning up your mess, I know he’s taking off your dress… </strong>
</p>
<p>For months Alex lives in pain. Remembering their life together, remembering how close he was to getting it all back, remembering how badly he screwed them up too many times.</p>
<p>Sometimes in the middle of the night he thinks that Jo is moving on. The first time he has this thought he thinks he is going to throw up. He can’t imagine someone else’s hands on her, can’t think of her being with someone else. Alex knows he isn’t allowed to feel this jealousy considering he left her, but he does. Jo has left him a mess, and deep down he wishes that she is a mess too.</p>
<p>What Alex doesn’t know is that Jo cannot move on. She feels sick at that thought, too. Alex Karev has wrecked every other man for her, she finds herself subconsciously comparing every man to him.</p>
<p>Constantly Jo thinks she should’ve gone to Kansas and met his kids. It would all be different if she did. They wouldn’t be a mess if she had gone.</p>
<p>But she didn’t. So both Jo and Alex lie alone in different beds worlds away from each other, their thoughts consumed with the other.</p>
<p>Months later Alex finds himself in a bar in Seattle and he sees her for the second time since the divorce.</p>
<p>Minutes after he sees her, he is kissing Jo in the middle of that bar.</p>
<p>Hours later they are in the loft and for once they do not feel like a mess.</p>
<p>Jo realizes she has again gone from a bar to a bed with Alex, but this time there’s no internal conflict. This time she doesn’t feel like it’s all wrong. Maybe she had to step back and realize how much she needed him to really want him again and to be okay with being with him again.</p>
<p>Alex’s arms are wrapped around her as they lay in silence, both of their minds reeling with all the things they want to say to each other but both of them feel unable to find the proper words.</p>
<p>Alex takes a deep breath, and looks up at the ceiling, afraid to look her in the eyes as he says this.</p>
<p>“Jo,” he whispers into the darkness.</p>
<p>“Alex,” she responds quietly, turning her head to face him.</p>
<p>“I love you,” he says. And he continues saying,</p>
<p>
  <strong>And I know that you don’t, but if I ask you if you love me…</strong>
</p>
<p><strong> I hope you lie to me.</strong> </p>
<p>But she doesn’t. Because she isn’t lying, when she tells him she loves him too.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sooooo this kind of spiraled out of control but Lie to Me is one of my favorite songs and inspired this so I hope you enjoy it reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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